In an episode of Kunal Kamra’s show Khabr-e-Azam, the founder of Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), Abhijeet Dipke alleged that the Delhi police commissioner was replaced overnight just before the July 20 crackdown on protesters assembled at Jantar Mantar specifically to execute a brutal lathi charge during the ‘Sansad Chalo’ march alongside arresting environmental activist Sonam Wangchuk. Dipke alleged that the order primarily came from the Union home ministry. “The main culprit has to be Amit Shah. So many protests take place in Delhi by political parties, the state responds with water cannon guns. They could have used water cannon guns on us too but they chose pellet guns and nail-fitted lathi. A clear message to the students of the whole nation that such protests will be dealt this way. It was clearly a political order which could come merely from Amit Shah,” he said.What happened on July 20, according to DipkeDipke alleges in the episode that the police commissioner who preceded the July 20 crackdown was replaced the night before because he was “not okay” with the orders coming from Shah to use force against the protesters. Police have used baton charges and tear gas against protesters marching towards parliament. A general diary entry at Parliament Street police station later confirmed the use of pellets by the Rapid Action Force, a fact Delhi Police had initially denied. Hospital records from Safdarjung confirmed at least one protester was injured by pellet fire. Over 100 CJP protesters were hospitalised, and more than 70 were detained. Abhijeet Dipke in Kunal Kamra’s show ‘Khabr-e-Azam’. Photo: Screengrab from Youtube video/Kunal Kamra.When asked about his understanding of how he sees the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan and what forced Modi to act, Dipke said, “He removed Dharmendra Pradhan to save his own chair otherwise, why would he?”He said that the July 20 crackdown backfired on the government and they miscalculated it. The expectation of the government, he alleged, was that the violence would break the CJP movement; instead, the day after the crackdown, Jantar Mantar recorded the largest crowd ever. The anger that had been concentrated in Delhi spread across the nation – Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Mizoram. The demand in the crowd then shifted from Pradhan’s resignation to the prime minister’s own. “It was that shift and pressure which compelled Modi to proceed with Pradhan’s resignation,” Dipke said. The day Pradhan resigned, Dipke was at his friend’s home with typhoid, receiving an intravenous drip. When he heard that CJP members Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das had been summoned for a government meeting, he pulled out the IV cannula and drove to Jantar Mantar. As he feared that if he wasn’t present and police moved in, the narrative would be that “the CJP ran away.” Pradhan’s resignation was confirmed while he was on stage. The Swatantra Bharadwaj Case and The DCPSanjay Kumar, the father of teenage activist Nishu Azad, was assaulted during the CJP protest by a Hindutva influencer, Swatantra Bharadwaj. He bragged about how he “cracked open” the head of a teenage content creator’s father during the CJP protest in July and “did not even go to jail” for it. In the episode, Dipke highlighted that he personally visited the office of Sachin Sharma, the New Delhi deputy commissioner, to demand action against Bhardwaj, who allegedly struck Sanjay Kumar, with a metal bracelet (kada) during the protests. Dipke showed Karma a video in which Bhardwaj could be seen showing off the weapon and later threatening further violence on Instagram. The DCP, he says, told him that video evidence was insufficient and that he was “free to go to the courts.” According to Dipke, the senior police official indicated that in order to file an FIR against the Hindutva influencer he needs to get an order from the court or else the police will not take action against him. Also read: 11 Posters That Capture The Spirit of Delhi Youth ProtestsDipke also highlighted that when he tried to counter him with some arguments about Delhi police raiding people’s homes who provided water to protesters, he was immediately shut down by the officer, who told him, “Don’t give this political speech here”. His conclusion about Sachin Sharma in the episode was: “He is a fully compromised man. That post doesn’t come to just anyone.” “I told the DCP that he is openly posting a video threatening to come back and beat more people. You are still saying you won’t arrest him,” Dipke recounts in the interview. “The DCP said: we cannot act on the basis of such videos.” Amidst this controversy, some older videos of Bharadwaj containing inflammatory speeches against Muslims also went viral. This raised a sharper question in the episode as to what legally constitutes hate speech. Bharadwaj roamed free for two months. He was detained in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, earlier this month and that too after the CJP accompanied by MPs Chandrashekhar Azad and Pappu Yadav marched to Parliament street police station to demand his arrest. CJP has alleged that Delhi Police refused to add the charge of attempt to murder, and that Bhardwaj’s ability to evade arrest for so long was not incidental. As of today, Bharadwaj is out on bail in connection with the alleged assault on Nishu Azad’s father. Delhi Police have added SC/ST Act provisions and criminal-intimidation-related provisions to the case, while a separate POCSO FIR concerns allegations of online threats and harassment involving the minor activist.The Supreme Court has expressed concern about the alleged intimidation of Nishu and ordered protection for her family, bringing the matter into a significantly more serious judicial context. Against this backdrop, Dipke drew attention to the conduct of the DCP during the Jantar Mantar protest and talked about the specific incident of a truck loaded with stones. It was stationed opposite the Parliament Street police station on the Sansad Marg near the protest site. Dipke’s immediate reaction on seeing it was to post a social media post about it. He recalled, “Sachin Sharma called Ashutosh Ranka and said, ‘Why is Abhijeet tweeting about this, it is an MCD truck and contains construction debris’ but it was later discovered through a report published by Newslaundry that the truck was involved in a hit-and-run case and was seized by the police on July 16.”He also highlighted the nuisance Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) – the students’ wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – members created during the CJP protest. “They would come at night, raise slogans and then be escorted out gently by the police. They were the very people who beat news reporters and police would stand as mute spectators,” he said. Dipke also pointed out a contradiction which unequivocally defines the police’s position. At the Jantar Mantar, police were doing security checks. Dipke and Sonam Wangchuk were both frisked. However, people like Bharadwaj, assaulted a person and walked out free. “I was being searched, Sonam sir was being searched. But Swatantra Bharadwaj walks in, cracks a skull, and walks away,” he said.The question of trust in the Modi governmentDipke, in the episode, reveals a deeper crisis of trust between a section of India’s younger generation and the Modi government. He said it has now come into picture how the government responds to the demand of young people who challenge it. He also sharply criticised the prime minister’s attempt to tour different colleges and deliver speeches saying, “This is not how you regain trust. He thinks that photo-op might change the narrative, but he is completely wrong because people are now aware of his agendas.”Dipke argued that young people in the country were largely treated as an apolitical demographic, particularly the ones associated with Instagram and the youth movement which forced Pradhan to resign changed this perception by bringing young people into direct political engagement, which the BJP failed to counter. Shortage of funds, teachers and jobsDipke connected the movement to young people’s frustration with examination failures, paper leaks and the perceived inability of government institutions to provide reliable educational opportunities, highlighting his current ‘School thik karo (fix the school)’ movement including many incidents from Maharashtra schools. In one school he visited, enrolment had fallen from roughly 80-90 students to just 12. In another, children were used as dummies to conceal the shortcomings of the school. “Government schools are functioning at 50% efficiency. Teachers are also frustrated about the shortage of teachers in schools as to how they should teach four classes at a time,” he highlighted.Also read: We Must Build on the Solidarity of July 20th In the absence of government funding, he says, some villages have been running crowdfunding drives of Rs 10-12 lakh to repair crumbling school buildings, with at least one teacher reportedly contributing Rs 4 lakh of personal savings to keep a school functional. However, the political significance of this, according to other panelists in the episode, was that Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who has been widely discussed in political circles as a potential Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed successor to Modi, is being rattled by Dipke’s school campaign. Dipke himself confirmed this by saying, “Media people were telling me that Devendra Fadnavis spoke about me for 15-20 minutes in a speech. What is the need for a sitting chief minister to talk about me for so long?” The episode underlined that Fadnavis has a political stake in projecting a “Maharashtra model” of governance and that Dipke’s ground-level reporting is quietly eroding that narrative.Ramsha Sartaj is an editorial intern at The Wire.